Ice rolled down Charlotte’s spine, an alarming mix of revulsion, fear, and anxiety. The sight of a single corpse after she had created so many shouldn’t have been so unsettling, but somehow this lone bloated body, discarded like garbage and ignored by everyone, nearly made her gag.
“Tell me about this crime lord,” Charlotte said, hoping for a distraction before her stomach rebelled and emptied itself on the boardwalk.
“Jason Parris was born in the Broken, in a small mountain town,” Richard said. “His family was poor, so after he finished high school, he joined the Marine Corps. It’s one of the elite branches of the Broken military. He survived a war in a foreign country and decided to leave after his four-year term of service was completed. When he returned home, he couldn’t hold a job. He worked for a series of businesses doing manual labor and was either fired or quit—he didn’t last long at any of them.”
“Why? Wouldn’t being in the military teach him discipline?”
“Oh, he has discipline.” Richard shrugged. “He also has very definite ideas about who is and isn’t worthy of his loyalty. He listened to his sergeants and officers because they had done what he did and he was smart enough to recognize that they were trying to keep him alive. In his mind, they had earned the right to give him orders. His civilian employers weren’t worthy of the same respect. They understandably took a rather dim view of his attitude. Jason found himself often unemployed. He was used to having his own money, and suddenly he had to depend on relatives for a roof over his head. It made him angry. One night, in a bar fight, that anger boiled over, and he severely injured a man. A relative took him to the Edge to keep him out of jail. He was just coming to terms with the idea that magic existed when slavers raided the Edge settlement. Jason was fit and healthy, prime merchandise from their point of view. They overpowered him. He proved to be a difficult captive and attacked them every chance he got. Voshak tried his best to break him but couldn’t. Jason went through the Market and was sold to a garnet mine. A month later, I raided that mine and found him in a hole in the ground. It was my second raid, and knowing what I know now, I would’ve had doubts about pulling him out of that hole.”
“He didn’t want to go home?”
Richard grimaced. “No. He asked for directions to the nearest city instead. I dropped him off at Kelena. He started calling himself Jason Parris and said that this city would become known as his island. An allusion, if you will, to the place where he first received his military training. Now, a year later, he owns everything you can currently see. The old crime lords that ran the Cauldron had established certain boundaries. They had families and business interests, and were unwilling to risk them. Parris had nothing. He tore through them and took over all of their territory. He kills whoever whenever however he feels necessary, without reservation or remorse.”
“Why would anyone follow him?” Sooner or later, someone like that would turn on his own people.
Richard shook his head. “Jason isn’t a psychopath. He’s vicious, but he kills selectively, with a strategy in mind. His people fear him, yet they also know that as long as they comply with his demands, they will be safe and rewarded. He respects strength. He can be charming, but no matter what he says or how he greets us, don’t trust him or his second, Miko. In fact, don’t trust anyone in that building. Jason is the drive and the muscle, but Miko is his mind, and that mind dreams up plans with high body counts.”
Richard stopped, and Charlotte paused next to him. The continuous wall of buildings here was particularly ramshackle, the awning pale and weather-bleached from a once deep rust to a pale, sad orange. Loose lumber had been nailed to the wall in every direction.
“Why did we stop?” Charlotte murmured.
“There are sentries watching us,” he said. “Across the street on the roof, one on the right in the boat, and there is one directly above us on the balcony, listening to everything we say. They will report to Jason, and we’ll wait here and see if he decides to see us.”
She leaned closer to him. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll knock,” Richard said.
The wall of the house behind them slid open. An old woman emerged, wearing a shapeless red dress and a red scarf on her hair. She waved at them with a wrinkled brown hand and disappeared inside, into the gloom.
“We’ve been invited.” Richard smiled.
“Indeed.”
“Follow me, please.”
He strode through the narrow hallway. The dog trotted in after him. She was last through the door, in command of Rear Ward, or whatever the proper military term was. Charlotte followed the dog up a short flight of narrow dark stairs, into a hallway, and through another doorway. A spacious room stretched before them, illuminated by the familiar Weird-style lanterns. Shaped like bunches of delicate glowing flowers, the lanterns cascaded from the hooks between the windows near the tall ceiling. An expensive rug stretched across the polished wooden floor to the stone fireplace. In the center, a tea table waited, surrounded by soft chairs upholstered in light leather.
A man sprawled in the largest chair. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his gray shirt. His chest was broad, and his arms, revealed by the short sleeves of his tunic, bulged with muscle. He had to be over six feet tall, and his huge frame dwarfed the chair. His head had been shaved in a series of meticulously spaced strips of various widths that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck; the effect was alternating stripes of glossy hair and smooth, shaved, light brown scalp.